Breakdown of Unsere Lehrerin gibt uns viele Lerntipps für die Prüfungsvorbereitung.
Questions & Answers about Unsere Lehrerin gibt uns viele Lerntipps für die Prüfungsvorbereitung.
Unser(e) is a possessive determiner (like our) and has to agree with the gender, number and case of the noun it belongs to.
- Lehrerin is:
- feminine
- singular
- in the nominative case (it is the subject of the sentence).
The correct nominative feminine form of unser is unsere.
Very short pattern (singular):
- masculine nominative: unser Lehrer
- feminine nominative: unsere Lehrerin
- neuter nominative: unser Kind
So Unsere Lehrerin = Our (female) teacher as the subject.
German usually marks grammatical gender for professions:
- Lehrer = male teacher, or sometimes generic “teacher” (esp. in older usage)
- Lehrerin = explicitly a female teacher
The -in ending (and -innen in the plural) is the typical feminine ending for professions:
- Student – Studentin
- Arzt – Ärztin
- Chef – Chefin
So Lehrerin tells you the teacher is female.
In German, all nouns are capitalized, no matter where they appear in the sentence.
In this sentence, the capitalized nouns are:
- Lehrerin
- Lerntipps
- Prüfungsvorbereitung
Adjectives, verbs, and other parts of speech are normally not capitalized inside a sentence (except at the start or for proper names).
The verb is geben (to give). In the present tense:
- ich gebe
- du gibst
- er/sie/es gibt
- wir geben
- ihr gebt
- sie/Sie geben
The subject is unsere Lehrerin = sie (she, 3rd person singular), so we need sie gibt.
That’s why the form is gibt: 3rd person singular present.
Wir is the subject form (nominative) meaning we.
Uns is the object form for us (dative or accusative, depending on the verb/preposition).
In this sentence:
- Subject: Unsere Lehrerin (our teacher) – nominative
- Indirect object: uns (to us) – dative
- Direct object: viele Lerntipps (many learning tips) – accusative
The verb geben works like English to give:
- to give someone (dative) something (accusative)
So it must be uns (dative), not wir:
- Unsere Lehrerin gibt uns viele Lerntipps.
= Our teacher gives us many learning tips.
Broken down by case:
Nominative (subject):
- Unsere Lehrerin
Dative (indirect object = “to whom?”):
- uns
Accusative (direct object = “what?”):
- viele Lerntipps
- die Prüfungsvorbereitung (because of für, which always takes the accusative)
So:
- Nominative: Unsere Lehrerin
- Dative: uns
- Accusative: viele Lerntipps, die Prüfungsvorbereitung
The basic rule for German word order with two objects is:
- Pronouns before full nouns
- Typically dative before accusative
Here we have:
- Pronoun: uns (dative)
- Full noun phrase: viele Lerntipps (accusative)
So the natural order is:
- gibt uns viele Lerntipps
You can say gibt viele Lerntipps uns, but it sounds unusual and would need a strong emphasis on uns in speech. The neutral, everyday order is uns (pronoun, dative) first, then viele Lerntipps.
Viel and viele both relate to quantity, but:
- viel = much (with uncountable things: viel Geld, viel Wasser)
- viele = many (with countable plural nouns: viele Bücher, viele Ideen)
Lerntipps is countable and plural (tips), so you need viele:
- viele Lerntipps = many learning tips
Grammatically, viele here is nominative/accusative plural, modifying Lerntipps in the accusative plural. In both nominative and accusative plural, the form is viele.
Lerntipps is a compound noun, very typical in German.
- lernen (to learn) → nominalized idea das Lernen (learning)
- der Tipp (tip/advice)
- der Lerntipp (learning tip, study tip)
- plural: die Lerntipps
German loves to glue meaningful parts together:
- Lerntipp = learning + tip
- Then just add -s for the plural: Lerntipps
That’s why it’s one word and capitalized: it’s a noun.
German has several plural endings. -s is common for:
- many modern or foreign words (das Auto – die Autos)
- abbreviations
- some short words
- compound nouns ending in a noun that already commonly takes -s in the plural, or where -s sounds natural
der Tipp can form the plural as:
- die Tipps
So the compound der Lerntipp → die Lerntipps simply keeps that pattern.
The key facts:
- für is a preposition that always takes the accusative.
- Prüfungsvorbereitung is feminine.
- Feminine singular:
- Nominative: die Prüfungsvorbereitung
- Accusative: die Prüfungsvorbereitung (same form)
With für you must use the accusative, so the correct article is die, not der (which would be dative or genitive).
So:
- Correct: für die Prüfungsvorbereitung
- Incorrect: für der Prüfungsvorbereitung
Prüfungsvorbereitung is also a compound noun:
- die Prüfung = exam
- die Vorbereitung = preparation
- die Prüfungsvorbereitung = exam preparation
German usually writes such combinations as one long word:
- Hausaufgaben (Haus + Aufgaben) = homework
- Sprachkurs (Sprache + Kurs) = language course
- Prüfungsvorbereitung (Prüfung + Vorbereitung) = exam preparation
It’s capitalized because it’s a noun, and there are no spaces inside the compound.
All three are possible in German, but they emphasize slightly different things:
für die Prüfungsvorbereitung
Focuses on the process of preparing for the exam.
The tips are meant for your preparation phase.für die Prüfung
Focuses directly on the exam itself.
Tips meant for the exam (how to behave, how to answer questions, etc.).zur Prüfungsvorbereitung (zu + der → zur)
Grammatically OK, but less natural here.
zu often means “towards, to, for the purpose of,” but with geben, für is the much more typical preposition for “tips for something.”
In everyday German, für die Prüfungsvorbereitung is the idiomatic choice in this sentence.
No, that sounds wrong/nonnative here.
With geben, the normal pattern is:
- jemandem (dative) etwas (accusative) geben
(give someone something)
So you say:
- Unsere Lehrerin gibt uns viele Lerntipps.
The construction etwas an jemanden geben exists, but it’s used in different contexts and sounds more like “to pass/hand something on to someone” physically or officially, often with things like Informationen, Unterlagen, weitergeben an etc. Even then, an is much less common with geben than the simple dative.
For “give us tips,” the natural, idiomatic form is uns … geben, not an uns geben.
Yes, that’s grammatically correct.
German main clauses follow the V2 rule: the finite verb (gibt) must be in second position, but almost any sentence element can go in first position for emphasis or topic focus.
Some possible orders:
- Unsere Lehrerin gibt uns viele Lerntipps für die Prüfungsvorbereitung. (neutral)
- Für die Prüfungsvorbereitung gibt uns unsere Lehrerin viele Lerntipps. (emphasis on the purpose: “As for exam preparation…”)
- Uns gibt unsere Lehrerin viele Lerntipps für die Prüfungsvorbereitung. (strong emphasis on us)
As long as the conjugated verb gibt stays in position 2, the sentence is fine. The differences are in emphasis, not correctness.